billyhoyle

This is such a specious line of thinking. Israel was the victim of terrorist act. You can argue that their response has been over the top, but there's no argument against them being justified to respond. Russia is invading a neighbor, and Sadulaev is encouraging it/using his platform to support it. What is America doing that comes even close to this? Your post completely ignores that in this case, Russia (and Hamas) were the initial aggressors. Why some people blame the U.S. for this, I don't know. Sadulaev has no excuse for his actions-plenty of Russian athletes are keeping quiet or even opposed to the war. If anything he may be doing this so that he doesn't have to compete in the Olympics and lose. Instead, he can use the excuse that he was prevented from competing.

For now, wrestling is still included in the deal with ESPN that includes WBB, lacrosse, baseball, and some others through 2032. But yeah, I think we basically have until then to turn the trend around. The marketability of the sport with having guys not wrestle during the season, having a single team completely dominate, minimal effort to simplify the format through favoring duals, having the tournament impossible to follow unless you are related to the athletes, etc needs to change. I think WBB has provided a blueprint that of course can’t be matched because more people like basketball, but it can be used to maybe get back to 1 million ish range.

I think this has been tried, but the best that can happen is just leveraging people from mma who have become notable to bring attention to it. The problem is that if anything ufc is becoming less popular, and it’s definitely becoming less geared to support the wrestling style. And most of the things mma fans like about the sport aren’t present in wrestling. I do think what others have pointed out about the scheduling of the individual tournament vs a dual format is a great point.

Would conservatives support a law that banned all states from performing abortions past 15-21 weeks (exceptions for life of mother/rape) but required all states to offer abortion access up to 15-21 weeks? Maybe a guarantee to IVF access could be included as well, which is hugely popular. There were very few abortion clinics in a number of southern states due to regulation prior to Roe being overturned, so this type of law would likely greatly expand access to abortion compared to even the days pre-Roe, although it would end mid/late term abortion, which many find to be despicable.

So the ratings came out for the final 4 semifinals. 14.2 Million for Iowa/LSU and 7 million for the South Carolina game. Even if the numbers aren't sustainable without Caitlin Clark, if they can maintain in the 7-10 million viewer range for these NCAA games (sweet 16 through final 4), they will get A LOT more in the next TV contract (potentially enough to make the sport profitable, as is the case for MBB). The advantage over women's soccer is the NCAA WBB is every year vs the world cup being every four years. Can wrestling ever appeal to a larger group of people through better marketing or will it always be niche due to the nature/weirdness of the sport? Obviously it won't be as big as women's basketball, but it's now clearly possible to take a non revenue sport and make it profitable. I think one benefit to this approach would be a build up of hype. The ncaa basketball tournament has benefitted from each round drawing in more interest. Wrestling is over in 3 days, so by the time a casual fan has heard of any of the wrestlers, it's all over. With this, there could be some duals on ESPN over the course of a couple weeks, and then one big tournament at the end.

I’m not sure about this year for wrestling, but it’s a very depressing trend. Also I don’t know what you mean with your point about brackets? I think WBB is getting in the millions for every game and 10+ for the Iowa/LSU game. I imagine the UConn game is similar. The growth has been incredible.

Seeing the ratings this year from the women’s ncaa tournament is pretty mind blowing in terms of how the sport has grown in the past decade. If it can continue like this, there’s no doubt WBB will be revenue generating and highly profitable. Ratings for wrestling have actually decreased over this same period though. Do you think this is an anomaly related to Caitlin Clark or are there lessons that NCAA wrestling can take from this growth?

Bush was a great president for decreasing the price of housing back in 2007-2008. Not enough people give him credit for that. Obama then screwed that up during his presidency, as prices went up significantly over those 8 years and have gone up since.

Kennedy has always been anti-vax and that can appeal to people both on the right and on the left. A lot of people are afraid of needles and really hate when the government is telling them that they have to get shots. In comparison, Trump and Biden are both pro vaccine (Trump pushed the development of the Covid vaccine faster than what is typical for drug development (and to great effect), and Biden was hugely influential in the incredibly fast rollout of both the Pfizer and Modern vaccines in the U.S.

John Smith? Taylor has a chance to be the undisputed greatest ever. He just has to win the Olympics and then wrestle one more cycle after this one and win another.

I'm surprised Iowa has only been second twice since 2013. Daton Fix alone has been second five times in that period. Even though their average is 2nd best, they're clearly a lot closer to 4 than they are to 1. The question is can another coach do better than Brands? My view is that most can't, but a couple of coaching candidates probably could do better.

RFK does have a big draw in that Trump was extremely pro vaccine while he was president and also didn’t stop states from locking down during Covid. So for those who view that as an important issue, he’s very appealing.

It’s great that he can make light of this, but how is he going to get paid?

A tactic most effectively demonstrates by DF.

Cael. Cornell if it's the 70% who didn't AA.

99% of the time it shouldn't matter that you have a wrestler placing a bet when books aren't even taking action on wrestling matches....Except for that 1% if somebody gets into a lot of trouble and then can be used to get to somebody on the men's/women's basketball team or baseball team. So as you say, it's a lot easier to just put a blanket ban on betting on college sports. Just like baseball puts a blanket ban on betting on baseball (and not just the game the athlete is playing in). And even though what these guys did is fairly harmless (relative to what Ferrari did), this is pretty much the most emphasized rule that there is in college sports and some of the bets were actually on Iowa athletics, which is very egregious.

Except the first thing they teach you when you show up to college and go to your first compliance meeting is that you can't gamble on ANY college athletics. And it's not a stupid rule because of how many athletes have shaved points. Part of Brands' job is keeping your athletes compliant with NCAA rules and eligible. But yeah, the Ferrari situation was 10X work and directly his fault.

Isn't Askren trying to get back into coaching? Didn't he try to get the Wisconsin job?

I think (and hope) Taylor will compete through 2028 because he has a chance to be the greatest wrestler in U.S. history. However, I can't imagine he will stick around when he is done competing just because he owns/sponsors a gym. Taylor coaching Iowa would be an incredible combination of the only program with the resources to match PSU and a coach who might be able to compete with Cael for top recruits.

This was my takeaway from his tweets. Very important people at ESPN asked him to do the announcing as a favor to them. Then a bunch of people complained about the great job he did because they are used to everything being the same since the 40s, and therefore he isn't going to announce NCAAs again. And so the fans will just have to miss out on how he revolutionized NCAA wrestling announcing by talking about MMA half the time. Because UFC announcing pays well, he will continue to do that.

I only disagree with one part of your post. Daton Fix threads are not close to the level of beating a dead horse. There probably haven't been enough of them.

He’d be a very good sideline guy. He just talks too much about things that have nothing to do with the actual match to be on the match calls.

For 1) Smith has always had this type of rep. Even his best teams were criticized for their passive wrestling style/playing the edge/stalling on top). For 2) if it’s a tie match, you don’t want to give up an easy counter attack against a guy like Carr who can shoot and finish in a second. Waiting to OT is common and not a bad thing. And the concept of not leaving the match in the hands of the refs doesn’t really apply in this match because it was just poor match awareness/coaching-and with 2 age level world champions like this the match is going to be close no matter what.

Would you think similarly if he were a Muslim who said you’re going to hell unless you accept the Quran? I think the line for post match religion is just stay positive and don’t shit on other people’s beliefs. Also, it’s ok to answer some questions about the actual match.